Leon Ginzburg was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1899. He completed his undergraduate studies at Columbia University in 1920 and then went-on to accomplish his surgical training at the Mt. Sinai Hospital. As a postgraduate, he traveled to Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest during the years 1924 and 1925. Upon his return, he became A. A. Berg's House Surgeon at Mt. Sinai Hospital and, for the ensuing five years, was an adjunct on his ward service and his assistant in the private practice of surgery. The association with Mt. Sinai lasted for 40 years, with Ginzburg achieving the rank of Clinical Professor. From 1947 to 1967, he was Director of Surgery at the Beth Israel Hospital, as the medical center was then known. Ginzburg's first description of granulomatous disease of the bowel appeared in 1927. In collaboration with Burrill Bernard Crohn and Gordon D. Oppenheimer, he wrote the landmark description of ileitis for the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1932. The discovery of ileitis was accomplished by examining surgically excised specimens during the time period that Ginzburg called B.A. (Before Anything), i.e., refrigeration, intravenous access, blood transfusion, antibiotics, steroids, etc. The Road to Regional Enteritis, published and reprinted from the Mt. Sinai Journal of Medicine, is a summary of the events leading to the classification of this inflammatory condition. It should be stated that there was a well-recognized controversy between Drs. Ginzburg and Crohn surrounding the early discoveries relative to regional enteritis. As both physicians neared their 90s, Ginzburg compared the discovery of regional ileitis to the controversy over the naming of our country after Amerigo Vespucci rather than after Christopher Columbus. He likened the former map maker to Crohn, who spent considerable time, effort, and travel lecturing and spreading knowledge about the disease, while he credited himself with its original description. Dr. Ginzburg, along with other investigators, believed that Dalziel (Dis Colon Rectum 1989;32:1076-1078) or Moynihan (Dis Colon Rectum 1981;24:133-139) should be credited with the initial discovery. Leon Ginzburg was active in practice at Beth Israel Medical Center until his death in 1988 at the age of 89.
